Hello from PPT Live in Atlanta.  I have been having a great time meeting the fine people down here.  I have had a couple of chances to meet folks and get some pictures taken which you can check out by watching my presentation below.  Just in case you are wondering the music is called Jump the Shark and was created by my friend Mark.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Tibby

 

April 1, 2009 (Waltham, MA)   The news out of Brainshark Headquarters is not good for famed mascot Tibby Cerebro.   For the past several weeks Brainshark management has been befuddled by the disappearance of several tropical fish from the company fish tank.

Cerebro, 30, of Northern California, has been charged with Chondrichthyes conspiracy, Pisces larceny and illegal swimming across state lines.

Cerebro, who was arrested Wednesday morning, claims he kept the stolen fish in a "personal home aquarium" - a 250-gallon tank, police said.  However, after searching his home off the Isle of Shoals, police found what appeared to be the remains of several tropical fish.  According to detectives, "If the forensic evidence confirms it, then Cerebro will also be charged with consumption of stolen fish food."

The big break in the case came when Brainshark HR staff set up surveillance cameras near the fish tank.  As shown below, Tibby was photographed red finned and is expected to quickly accept a plea bargain. "I knew we would find out who it was, I just did not imagine that it would be Tibby", said HR Manager, Stacey King.  

Greg Flynn, VP of Products & Services added, "I have been with Brainshark since day 1 and I would never have imagined such a thing.  I just don't understand why Tibby would bite the hand that was feeding him." 

Tibby seen approaching the tank.

Reaching into the tank.

Caught red finned!

These are questions that were submitted during our webinar on script writing and recording audio.

Question:  I'm a product specialist, not necessarily a professional speaker - if I use an 'um' or stumble over a word - is it critical that I edit that out?

Tibby:  The goal is always to deliver clean audio.  If you have a good script then you are not likely to have the need for an "um" since this is a pause that we use so that our mouth has something to do while it waits for our brain to give it direction.  Since you can easily re-record a single slide of audio it is usually worth the effort and your audience will be the happier for it.

Question:  You keep mentioning that we must follow a conversational tone...how do you keep abandon rate with a conversational tone when a presentation is 20-25 min long?

Tibby:  Great question.  The answer is value and tone. The first key is value.  If every slide and therefore everythign said on every slide brings value to the viewer then you will have a successful presentation.  Your viewers will respond to perceived value and a conversational tone will help reduce abandon rates by keeping the delivery engaging.  Changes in tones and emphasis are part of engaging the audience and keeping them involved.  Monotone delivery that drones on will quickly lead to departing viewers regardless of the overall presentation length. 

Question:  My group is going to use Brainshark for training on a huge software change. Do you have any advice for training that is going to be lengthy (significantly more than 10 min)? How do I keep the learners engaged?

Tibby:  The key thing to keep in mind is effectiveness.  Current data indicates that our tolerance for long presentations has decreased.  Between ADHD, email, voice mail, meetings, instant messaging and doing more with less we all have less time.  Know your audience and don't send a 30 minute presentation to people who do not have 30 minutes to watch it.  Instead be sensitive to their ability to process the data and break into chewable parts.  Create 3 -10 minute presentations instead.  You will get better viewing numbers and your audience will appreciate the content and retain more because they will have stay focused for each 10 minute block rather than losing focus at 10 minutes and missing 20 minutes of content.

Question:  If slides have good animation, is it OK to have longer narration than 30 seconds?

Tibby:   it is not an animation question it is a consumption question.  Each slide should have one theme with as many as 4 key points that support the theme.  More often than not this can be done in 30 seconds or less.  If your slides are extending to the 60 second range then I would hypothesize that you are trying to cover too much material in a single slide.   Each slide is a page in the book of this presentation.  I stipulate that it is better to have a 20 page book with 20 pt font than a 10 page book with 10pt font.  Viewers like to feel like the content is moving, progressing.  Slides that are too long often lead to what I (to use another metaphor) call "speed bumps" in the flow of the presentation.  Speed bumps lead to off ramps and off ramps are bad.

Question:  Would you say that animation plays a big part in catching the student's attention while taking the course.

Tibby:  While I would agree that animation and visual enticement is helpful in gaining attention; the key to grabbing and keeping the audience is well-delivered, impactful audio.  You can communicate more with your words and intonation in a shorter amount of time then you can do visually or with text.  The audio elicits an emotional response that must be considered, manipulated, planned and delivered by the speaker.   The slide/visual object is the guide for the audio.  The power of the content comes from the audio, which is why scripting and practicing are critical elements to delivering good audio and therefore having successful presentations.

Question:  When creating the script and working with different speakers, how do you reach a consensus on what needs to be stated and the way it sounds best, so that everyone is comfortable and happy.

Tibby:  Another great question.  Just asking this question shows that you are on the right track!   In our 6 Steps to Success^TM communication strategy; the first step to a successful communication is to agree on the objective of the communication.  Once everyone involved is on-board with the objective, then you will need to map out how the objective will be achieved (how the story will be told) and then who is responsible for which piece of the story.  Now whether everyone is comfortable and happy is another question.  At some point you have to build the communication and get the word out.  Consensus is a great objective for each project but not always attainable.

Question:  As a new Brainshark user, I'm not fully aware of its total functionality...as alluded to in a prior question, is there a way to edit a particular piece of the audio without doing the entire slide over again?

Tibby:  Yes.  You can easily download the .mp3 audio file from any single slide, edit that audio and then replace the audio by uploading the new .mp3 audio file.  With that said, this may be more work than actually re-recording the whole slide.   If you write a script and you keep the slide length to the 30 second range then this means you can easily re-record a slide in 30 seconds or less.

Question:  Do you have problems with narrator being able to read the script while also clicking to trigger the slide animations and work the phone recording process? Some narrators seem to be challenged by all this multitasking. Do you usually have someone sit with the narrator who can do animation clicks, etc so the speaker can focus on his script?

Tibby:  This is not a very common concern but I have heard it before and I recommend the solution I use myself when recording.  Set the animations that need to be connected to the spoken word to appear "On Click".  Don't worry the speaker with setting these timings, let them focus on delivering quality audio.  After the slides are recorded, log in and go to the edit slide screen and set the animation timings for each slide.  The reason for the On Click setting is so that you can manage these animation timings in Brainshark. 

Question:  Is there someone we can contact for suggestions who can preview our presentation/course before we enroll students?

Tibby:  We have just released a new free service called Presentation Success Review and Feedback.  This gives you the ability to send your Brainshark presentation to our Customer Success Group where one of our highly qualified Customer Success Consultants will review your presentation and give you feedback on ways to improve it.  All you have to do is send your contact information and the presentation link to CustomerSuccess@Brainshark.com

Have a Sharktastic day!

Hi this is Tibby (short for Tiburon).  I will be making a guest appearance from time to time so that I can respond to questions that have been submitted.  My aim is to share answers and approaches to common issues and ideas.  These will take on a Q&A format and appear here in the blog.  Feel free to comment and/or ask follow up or additional questions at anytime.

This first set of questions came from the people who attended the recent live online session about animations.  I hope you find this information useful.

Question:  In Brainshark does the first animation need to be set to on click? If it's set to on click does the person recording audio have to click on the mouse to see it?

Tibby:  No.  The first animation does not have to be set to on click it can be set to "With previous" or "After previous" This includes animations that you might like to put on the master slides as well.  If the first animation is set to "On click" then yes the person recording will have to click on the mouse to see it during the recording process.

Question:  Is the alignment tool something you put into your custom toolbar?

Tibby:  We recommend turning the alignment on for all presentations to help you with spacing on your presentations.  If you find it easier to access it from a custom toolbar then absolutely include it.

Question: What's the use of adding timing in PowerPoint if you have to add them again once it's converted to Brainshark?

Tibby:  Great question.  If you are using "On click" animations then do not add timings in PPT.  You will add them during recording and be able to modify them in Brainshark without having to modify and re-upload the PPT.  If you are using either "With previous" or "After previous" then the timings for these animations is coming from PPT and is not modifiable within Brainshark.

Question: So if there's narration and animations are coming up at different times, should Start be set as On Click or as After Previous?

Tibby: Using "On click" gives you the most flexibility and ease of use in terms of editing timings after the fact.  However, there are times when I want 3 objects to appear simultaneously and so I would either group them together as one object or assign a "With previous" action to the second and third animations so these all appear (or fade or wipe, etc..) at the same time.

Question: My question is for much more advanced considerations. Looking at his sample Brainshark with many fancy animations, they use copied and stacked objects, each with a few animations. Does he have any tricks for finding the right object in a stack for making changes?

Tibby:  Layered objects certainly present a challenge when you want to make modifications.  The only trick I am aware of is to tab through the objects to find the one I want to manage.  PPT 2007 comes with a feature called the Selection Pane that makes it easy to organize, find and manage objects on a slide. Richard did mention a plug in; I believe it is PPT Extreme that can help with this.

Question: I just watched one of the Brainshark trainings earlier today that said that Brainshark won't support Emphasis animations and will only do Exits if the Entrance is on the same slide. Is this still the case?

Tibby:  No, this is not the case and if you watch that same tutorial today you will not see that slide.  Brainshark supports Entrance, Emphasis, Exit and Motion Path animations.  In fact in the Animation Best Practices tutorial you will see, entrance, exit and motion path animations in Brainshark.

Question:  Does Brainshark support animated .gif files?

Tibby:  This is a little more complicated.  In order for the animated .gif to work you must have at least 1 animation active on the slide.   This can be any type of animation and need not be seen by the viewer.  If it is on-click then it has to have a timing set in Brainshark.  If it is with previous or after previous then it is already timed and you do not have to do anything more.  Watch the brief presentation below for an example of two slides with animated .gif objects in Brainshark.

Question:  Does Brainshark support PP Extreme?

Tibby:  PPT Xtreme is a product that helps you import images/photos into PPT from Photoshop.  The file you upload to Brainshark is a .ppt file and so there is no issue with this product and Brainshark.

Question:  Do you recommend any % for grow/shrink that works best?

Tibby:  The feature in PPT does not give you a lot of options.  The deciding factor is really the quality of the image.  We find that reducing to 50% and increasing to 150% usually produce the best results in terms of not degrading the image quality however this can vary based on the resolution quality of the original image.

Question:  Can you go over last point of making grouped into png?

Tibby:  He was referring to the ability to take multiple objects and create a single image file.  You can highlight multiple objects by holding the ctrl key down and selecting the objects and then right clicking on one of the highlighted objects to group them together.  Then you have a choice, you can either assign an animation to this new group of objects or you can click File>save as and save the group of objects as a single image file.  I suggest that you first group the objects and assign the animation.  If the images are problematic in appearance in PPT when you do this then take the next step and save the group as a new image and this should work.  Brainshark will support the animation action in either case.

Question:  The blue circles on this slide...did he create these in PPT? How do you create the Highlighting feature?

Tibby:  Yes, those circles are auto shapes available in PPT.  The highlighting feature is a combination of using auto shapes and manipulating color gradient and transparency.  These are also standard features in PPT.  You can access these features in the drawing toolbar usually located at the bottom of your screen while using PPT.

Question:  Is there support for Mac's keynote?

Tibby:  We do not support Keynote, but Keynote supports PPT and so all you have to do is use the conversion capability within Keynote to convert the file to a .ppt and them you can upload to Brainshark.

Question:  Can you loop animations for continuous play?

Tibby:  You can not use the repeat animation function, but you can copy and paste the same animation to achieve the repeating effect.

Question:   How can I determine if my screen shots are Jpeg, GIF or PNG?

Tibby:  Depending on the settings on the image too that you are using (we recommend SNAG-IT) you can right click on the image to check the properties or you can hit File>save as and see what file format it wants to be saved as which is usually and indicator of what it is.  IF you are unsure then your can save it as a .png file and insert it back into the slide.  We do recommend .png files because they are the most flexible in terms of supporting text and colors.  Generally speaking, .gif is a superior format for text based objects and .jpg for color based bit they both have weaknesses in the other area.

Question: It would be incredibly helpful if Brainshark allowed exit animation too...right now its only entrance so I have to layer pictures over each other or jump to another slide which doesn't look as smooth.

Tibby:  We do support exit animations today.

Question:  In order to make presentations more interactive is there a possibility of adding a function to branch slides (right now we can only branch a question, but it would be nice to have the ability to put up a question slide, if you answer one way you go to one slide, if you answer another way you go to another slide - I understand this is possible now, but then you get stuck...being able to branch slides would be very helpful. And to get really interactive - will there be a way (soon hopefully) we could make the slide itself interactive - being able to click on the slide itself (outside of a question slide) and directed somewhere.

Tibby:  These are both very creative enhancement requests.  I have sent them to our product manager.  Please keep the creative ideas coming.  We love to get product suggestions.

Question:  Thank you for putting together such a great topic for discussion. I believe it was the presentation featured that sold everyone.  Simply amazing.  The music piece as well as all the special effects would be of interest to me.  I am very proficient in PowerPoint, but this looks like it needs fancy software....but you're saying it doesn't....so I look forward to learning the features you used.   

Tibby:  Thank you so much for attending.  I thought it was Sharkerrific as well!  All the features you saw are standard PPT objects and animations.  On Customer Connection Online (CCO) (http://cco.brainshark.com/) you will find a tutorial on Animation Best Practices that should be helpful.  Background audio is a standard piece of functionality and you can find this explained in our tutorial about the Media Library also on CCO.

Thanks again for all of the Sharktastic questions.  I look forward to the chance to respond to more very soon!